


A Girl Lies Dying

by duderank



Category: NCIS
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-09-23
Updated: 2011-09-23
Packaged: 2017-10-23 23:44:22
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 635
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/256423
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/duderank/pseuds/duderank





	A Girl Lies Dying

Through the "earwig" she heard the words she'd wanted to hear for a very long time. Amanda was OK.  
Now she was free of the chains that bound her to the man who had controlled her for so long. She was now free to choose her own path once more. To be the person she had been before all of this had happened. The person who just wanted to do her job and to make a difference.

She grabbed hold of Bankston's arm, struggling with him for control of the gun. Firing indiscriminately, he had already killed one of the bus passengers. The little girl cowering in terror on the floor to her right would be his next victim. She was young, not much older than Amanda. Gibbs, unable to shoot, with Bankston using her as a human shield, might very well be his next, and then he would kill her. He had to be stopped, and there was only one way to do that now.

In many ways her life had ended the day Amanda had been kidnapped. Since that day everything up to that moment had become meaningless to her. The years of studying Law at Harvard. Her attempts to become accepted as an NCIS field agent by Gibbs and the others. Even her relationship with Jimmy Palmer. Nothing had mattered to her other than keeping Amanda from harm. Now she was safe.

She'd always known that a time would come when she would have to pay for all that she'd done. That time was now.

She mouthed the word so that Gibbs could see.  
"Shoot".

Still he hesitated. He needed further persuasion. She nodded in the affirmative and prepared for her judgement, knowing in her heart that Gibbs would do it. That whole "biblical approach to things".  
"Go ahead. Do what you do best Gibbs. Kill the bad guys. Kill us both. I'm ready, and I'm sorry".

In that last split second, waiting for Gibbs to pull the trigger, just one thought crossed her mind. One thought alone. She wished she could have got to hold Amanda in her arms one last time.

Gibbs fired three shots, each round ripping cleanly through her body.  
She dropped like a stone. In just a few moments the nightmare would end and the guilt would be gone.

All was now silence.  
The floor of the bus beneath her was wet with her blood. She could taste it too in her mouth .  
She knew what she'd wanted to happen had worked. She had trusted Gibbs to follow through, to take the shot and he had not let her down. He had given her what she craved, a chance to redeem herself. To pay back a debt she owed to Vargo, to Brent, to her country. Most of all, Amanda.  
Serving a life sentence would have brought untold shame on the sister she held so dear. So dying didn't seem such a bad choice to make.

She knew that Bankston must be behind her somewhere, either dead already or dying too. The man who had brought her to this moment, put her sister through all kinds of hell, had got what was coming to him. That was satisfying to know.

By now Gibbs was kneeling over her.  
She looked into his eyes, so full of regret.  
"He looks so sad," she thought. " Don't be. It's OK. This is right."

The last thing she ever did in life was to try to picture Amanda's face in her mind's eye. She hadn't seen her for what seemed like an eternity, not in the flesh at least, but she just about managed to bring the young girls' image swimming back into focus before her dimming eyes.  
"Amanda, don't hate me. Please don't hate me."

Then her eyes grew dark, forever.


End file.
